Writing about Writing Part 2

 2 years ago, I wrote a blog post about writing. Or rather, how not to write. How, when writing, I’d do anything else than the actual writing. 

Writing about Writing

https://num7.paranormalis.com/2022/04/writing-about-writing.html

Now that 2024 is nearing its end, I finally have a proper writing setup that I'm happy to share. To my greatest surprise, it’s on a platform that I’ve been gravitating around and using now and then for a decade: Dropbox Paper. It only needed a couple of tweaks to reach the stars, and here we are. 

It all started about a year ago. I was writing a John Titor 2K fanfiction on Paranormalis, and the more I was re-reading it, the more it looked like shit… 

Medium.com: Goodbye for Now

So I have decided to stop posting on Medium.com. Mostly due to lack of time, I gave up. In spite of that, I have posted a total of 81 articles. 14 Articles and 67 Poems.

In one year, I made a total of $1.76. Is this more than my expectations? Yes, it is a lot more. I was expecting zero. But I got more than zero. So, success, yay! 🎉🍾 💰

But all in all, it's not worth it for me. My focus would rather be on Paranormalis and this blog. I have the feeling that with the same amount of time, I can add a lot more value to Paranormalis by being a part of the discussion and implementation of new features. The same is true with this blog and other projects I am working on. They add more value and are more rewarding than just posting to Medium.

Don't get me wrong. Medium is a great platform for great content. It's a great product.

But considering how I'm getting very few views on Medium and very few views on my blog... Well, I'd rather spend time on my blog.

Maybe I'll get back to it someday. To be continued... 

See ya! 

Quick Blog Update

Hi, 

As you might have noticed, I'm no longer posting as much as before. It's not because I don't like this blog. I love it and I love Blogger. I just don't have that many things to share, and I'm aware it's never going to reach a wider audience. It's my tiny blog and always has been. 

Nowadays, I tend to post on my primary website, Paranormalis.com. There, I reach a larger audience. People that I actually know and interact with. It feels more rewarding and creates more value than posting things here, in a vacuum. 

I also started posting on Medium.com as a personal experiment, to see if the kind of articles I write can generate revenue. It's an exciting adventure, but I'm not very consistent. Still, I'm trying to push forward and keep the ball rolling. I must have made about $0.50 up to now. More than zero... 

So, here are a couple of links where to find me. 

Paranormalis.com: 
Paranormalis | The Paranormal and Time Travel Forum

Medium.com: 
Num7 - Medium

I'll certainly keep posting here once in a while. Not just right now, or on a regular basis. 

See you around! 

Wasting Your Time on the Internet in 2005

Restoring long-lost content on Paranormalis using the Chronovisor technique really brings me back to those days I’d spend, fooling around on the Internet, so many years ago. Basically, wasting my time, you know... 

Here’s one of those threads: https://paranormalis.com/threads/manhattan-island-abduction.19078/

It feels like we’re back in 2005 all over again, right? 

What was I doing on the Internet back in the day? Well, I wasn’t doing much, most of the time. Youtube wasn’t around yet. I don’t think we had high-speed Internet yet. You couldn’t plug yourself on Netflix and spend the whole day watching series after series. 

Writing About Writing

 I like writing. I often find myself fooling around in Evernote, Dropbox Paper, or Google Docs, trying to figure out which one of these editors offers the best environment for a writer. That doesn’t make me a writer, though. But apparently, it sort of makes me feel like one day, I could be one. 

When attempting to write something, I always get distracted by little details, like the font and font size. Should I use Lato 12? It’s a nice font with good readability. Perhaps Garamond? It’s way more formal and serious but the characters are a little thinner. Isn’t it the font dictionaries are written in? Is my line spacing okay? Would 1.1 be better than 1? Is my Heading 2 big enough? Oh well… 

On Passion Projects | So Many Things, So Little Time

Do you have a passion project?

Paranormalis is one of my passion projects. I often wish I'd spent more time on it. But what time?

I have several dream projects I'll very likely never do. I'd like to develop and release a game of my own. Compose music for something that gets recognition. Write something, a book, or an ebook. Become a streamer, have a YouTube channel, be a YouTube personality and live off of it. Get better at home improvement. Start my own business online and earn passive revenues, no more 8-to-5 jobs. Wow, that list goes on and on.

But... What am I doing? I feel I don't have any time to do anything... what am I supposed to do?

Why do I prefer to sit on my ass, instead of actively working on something? Inertia? When my workday is over and I'm done doing regular day-to-day stuff... I'm tired and it's almost time to go to bed. And I don't even have kids! What's my problem!?

The examples I gave above take so much time and commitment, I'd hardly even know where to begin if I was to tackle one of them.

I thought of starting a podcast once. At some point, I noticed how much work it would be and instantly knew I wouldn't be able to commit to it. Do 1, 2, or 3 episodes? Probably. Keep going on a regular schedule? Certainly not.

Am I the only one to feel this way? What are your passion projects, and where and how do you find time for them?

--Num7

Originally posted on Paranormalis: 

On Passion Projects | So Many Things, So Little Time | Paranormalis

Bilingual Blogging?

French being my first language, I’ve been questioning myself regarding whether I should blog in English or in French. 

In French, I reach my relatives and people close to me, although they might not be interested in what I share. And my audience of French readers is pretty small… In English, I make my content available to pretty much the whole Internet, at the price of making it somewhat less interesting and accessible to my relatives and friends. What about mixing languages? Not sure… Seems to me there’s no win-win situation here. 

I’ve read a ton of articles and discussions about it, but I’ve always had a hard time deciding what’s the best thing to do. The last article (it’s actually a rant!) I read covers most of the possible scenarios and brings to light their shortcomings. 

Read the article here: 

http://realvirtuality.info/2012/05/why-bilingual-blogging-sucks/

Depending what your blog is about and how you see it, there isn’t necessarily one best thing to do. In the meantime, I’ll stick to English. 

How to Post A "Status Update" on Blogger

Hey, ever felt like sharing a status update or a quick thought on your blog, without making it an actual post? 

A lot of blogging platforms like Blogger don’t allow other post format than a simple blog entry. But it’s possible to come up with a way to post a “status update” on your Blogger-powered blog. Here’s now. 

1. Create a new post with no title. 
2. In the post’s content, write your status update as a heading. 
3. Set your post’s category as “Status Update”
4. Post it! 

Why I Switched Back From WordPress to Blogger

Switching between blog platforms is now a yearly thing for me. It seems I can’t satisfy myself with one single platform on the long run. I’ve been enjoying WordPress for a while, until I figured it contained a ton of cool features I didn’t need after all. I gladly traded these bells and whistles for increased simplicity and ease of use. 

I’m going to share what made me ditch WordPress and move back to Google’s Blogger. 

Dropbox Paper: When Less Is More

I’ve been a regular Evernote user for a few years now, using it numerous times a week to compose blog posts, articles and announcements for several of my websites. Evernote allowed me to write in a somewhat distraction-less environment that made me focus totally on my content, not on its form.  

While I love Evernote, I sometimes find myself forced to fool around with fonts families, font sizes and the likes… stuff that sometimes takes my attention away from my content. 

I’m surprised that I discovered Dropbox Paper just a few days ago, because it’s been in beta for half a year! It caught my attention immediately as a potential upgrade from Evernote, so I went ahead and tested it. 

Now That TwitterFeed Has Shut Down…

It came to me as a surprise to discover that TwitterFeed was permanently shutting down on October 31st 2016. They announced it in an email just a few weeks prior, out of the blue.

We’re writing to let you know that Twitterfeed will be shutting its doors on October 31st, 2016. It’s been one heck of a run and we can’t thank you enough for your loyal usage and support over the years.

Although they recommended in their email announcement to move to either Buffer or dlvr.it, I didn’t like the idea of moving from a free service to a paid one…

From what I can see, the best 100% free alternative to TwitterFeed is IFTTT. I’m able to achieve the same results with ease and it works great every time.

See you over at IFTTT.

Here Is Why Focus Is The Key To Successful Niche Blogging

Today, we’re going to dissect and understand a key factor that can make you either succeed or fail at niche blogging. Obviously, there’s a ton of factors that matter, but this one is a big deal. It shapes the very way you’ll write each and every one of your articles.

Let’s get straight to it!

MadAdsMedia Review: CPM Ads Network

MadAdsMedia is a CPM ads provider for website publishers who wish to monetize their websites. They offer CPM ads only, so no CPC here. I've been personally working with them for more than a year and they are, by far, the best Adsense alternative I could find. Let's see why.

Requirements

Their minimum requirements are reasonable: 10,000 page views per day. They're looking for well designed sites with friendly content. They're a pretty good fit for medium to big sized websites that seek to generate passive revenues.

50 Vintage Web Ad Banners

Check out the link below to take a look at old banner ads from the late 90s.

VC&G | 50 Vintage Web Ads

Time sure flies! Back then we didn't have fancy ad-blockers or anything. It was quite normal to have such ugly flashing banners all around the pages we were visiting. Good old days!

Dealing With iOS9 Ad Blockers on Your Ad Sponsored Blog

A good article posted on Igor Kromin's blog, a blog I visit from time to time. Thought I'd share it here.

A new release of iOS always brings in new features and its share of troubles and this time it hasn't been any different. Since the iOS 9 release date on the 16th of September, Apple made available its content blocker API to developers. This brought out a deluge of ad blocker apps on the App Store, with some topping the charts within moments of release. This may be a welcome addition to many people, but something that many miss is how this hurts those sites and blogs that rely on advertising revenue to pay for their hosting fees. 

So I got to thinking about how to deal with this. I've seen comments stating that content providers should just suck it up and find alternative ways of generating revenue. I'm sorry, but this is the kind of argument that a zealot preacher would sermonise - all talk about how it should be without solid examples or direction about the 'better ways'. I would argue that for a casual blog, ads are the only real viable source of revenue.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to deal with this situation. The only thing I could come up with was to appeal the the readers' sense of decency by supplying a message when an ad does not load.

Read more:
Dealing with iOS9 ad blockers on your ad sponsored blog

Web Fonts for Your Blog: Open Sans vs Lato

As I was browsing around to find out which web fonts are the most popular and ultimately, which one is currently the best, I came across this blog post. It compares in depth 2 of the most popular free fonts of the moment: Open Sans and Lato. Both are looking great, but which one is the best?

Open Sans vs Lato : A head to head Comparison

How to Create Great Content

It's not always easy to produce content that is worth someone else's time, something that is worth posting. Sometimes you get it right, some other times you don't. The key here is to be steady and make sure everything is in place to allow yourself to create great content every time. 

When browsing the Internet, people need to get their hands on the information they're looking for as fast as possible. What does that mean? It means they are laser focused, impatient and have a very short attention span. What are the most basic things you can do to maximize your chances to satisfy these people and present them the awesome, compelling content they're looking for?

Blog Activity Graph for FlatPress

A new plugin for FlatPress was recently released by Igor Kromin. It's a great addition that allows you to see your monthly blog activity.

Click the link bellow to check it out:
Blog activity graph for FlatPress

New Official FlatPress Style: Leggero v2

I'm pleased to announce that NoWhereMan, the maintainer of FlatPress, approved my new take on the classic FlatPress theme. Leggero v2 is part of the FlatPress source code, as an available style for the Leggero theme.

I present you, Leggero v2!

Some quick details about it:

• It's 100% responsive
• It works properly with Internet Explorer, as well as with any modern web browsers
• It uses web fonts with shadows, has a transparent sidebar and a fixed background image
• It looks modern and actual, while still having the "FlatPress / Leggero" feel it should have

Chitika Review - Pay Per Click Ads

I tested Chitika, a pay per click (PPC) ads service to help publishers monetize their traffic. I displayed their ads a forum message board and 2 blogs for approximately a week, with very disappointing results. Here's my quick review of Chitika.

$0.07 for 5 clicks? Are you kidding!?

You read it well. What they give you per click is ridiculous. The highest paid click I managed to get was $0.03. I've read similar feedback on quite a few blogs and forums analyzing various ads networks. It would seem that their PPC is very, very low, especially if you're used to Adsense's $0.50 to $3.00 per click. Even with a very high click-through rate, which I had not, it would take you a huge number of clicks to earn anything of interest.